Posts tagged: "equipment review" » Ryan Brenizer — NYC Wedding Photographer. Problem solver, storyteller.

Tag Archives: equipment review

January 2, 2012

Review: LensAlign, Spyder LensCal and the importance of AF Fine Tune

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Get your f/1.2 photos in perfect focus

Cameras come with lots and lots of bells and whistles these days, and some of them seem a lot more useful than other. Built-in selective color mode? No thank you. But every once in a while there’s a new feature that changes the game in a big way. Autofocus. Auto-exposure modes. Vibration reduction. To my mind, autofocus fine-tuning is one of these. What is this? Nikon calls it “AF Fine Tune,” and Canon calls it “Focus Micro-Adjust,” but basically it’s simple, and brilliant: It allows your camera to make sure your autofocus actually works up to its full potential.

Lens design is an incredibly complicated process, and like anything in life we can’t aim for perfection, just good enough. The problem is compounded because different cameras, even of the same model, respond to lenses slightly differently, and the lens-maker doesn’t have access to your camera when calibrating in the factory. Generally, most good companies produce results that are, to use a scientific term, good enough for Rock ‘n’ Roll. If you’re taking photos at f/8, it’s highly unlikely you’d ever notice a problem. But especially these days where it’s more and more fashionable to shoot with the razor-thin DoF of f/1.8 or wider, little problems become glaring. If a lens if off by even a couple millimeters, that can be the difference between an eye and an eyelash in focus. An inch? Then it’s the nose in focus, and you’re noticeably off.

In the old days, you were pretty stuck. All you could do is send the lens back to the factory and hope for the best, or actually travel to a lens technician and have them re-calibrate it to your camera. Message boards are filled with horror stories of people who sent a lens back five or six times and still couldn’t get it working right.

But a few years ago, dSLR makers figured out how to change the variances a little bit in-camera. Is the nose in-focus instead of the eye? You can tell the camera to move back an inch with that particular lens. Is the focus going back to the ear? Tell the lens to focus forward a bit. Suddenly, that slightly annoying fast lens you couldn’t quite get right becomes a useful tool. Batches of lenses that had wide reports of focus quality control-issues, like some of the wide, fast Sigma lenses such as the 24mm f/1.8, work just fine, thank you very much.

Perhaps because these work best with fast, professional lenses, and because it’s a bit tricky to get working properly, most camera-makers include this feature at the “advanced amateur” level and beyond. For instance, Nikon has it on the D300s but not the D90 (though they did include it on the D7000), and Canon has it on the 7D but not the D60. It’s such an incredibly useful feature that I wouldn’t be surprised to see it buried in menus with a “WARNING: Only touch if you know what you’re doing!” on even the most basic DSLR models in the future.

The basic working of it is extremely similar across camera lines. Go into the camera function menu with your problematic lens mounted, and you’ll see a chart with pluses and minuses radiating out from zero. These allow you to correct for front- or back-focus to varying degrees. Because modern lenses have CPU chips in them, the camera will even be able to tell two lenses of the same model apart. This is crucial because, to paraphrase Tolstoy: “All perfect lenses are alike; each imperfect lens is imperfect in its own way.”

But the catch is that there’s no automatic way to do this. If there was, the camera could just fix the problem without a chart. Basically you need to shoot, figure out the amount of front-focus or back-focus. And then shoot again and see if your calculations were correct. And most importantly, you want to absolutely make sure that none of the focus problems are due to user error, or just the tricky act of hitting a precise target at f/1.4

If this sounds like a complicated, frustrating process, well … it can be, especially if you have a lot of lenses … even more so if you have to test all of them with multiple cameras. And so a few companies have stepped in with products to make the process easier. I tested both the LensAlign system and Spyder LensCal with a variety of lenses on my Nikon D3s bodies, as well as the Sigma 30mm f/1.4 on the Canon 7D, since a number of people have reported back-focus on this lens with Canon bodies.

Both of these products are trying to perform a very simple task in an effective way, which is to be a good autofocus target and and effective measuring system that will let you see exactly where the plane of focus falls. There are only so many possible configurations for this, and so you can see that when set up they look very similar (LensAlign on left; LensCal on right):

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To eliminate user error, when setting up for use you should use a tripod exactly level with the target so your lens is at a perfect perpendicular. Now, a good lens should be distance-calibrated, meaning that if it focuses accurately at five feet it should focus accurately at 10 feet, but that’s not always the case so I tended to set the lens at the distance I most often shoot with it (closer for the 24mm f/1.4, farther for the 85mm f/1.4, and so on). This also made sure that the lens had a big enough target to focus on, since hitting these from 10 feet away with a 24mm lens won’t be as accurate as you want it to be.

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As you can see, in use these are extremely similar. The LensAlign chart has a lot more to it, which can make it easier to set up a perfectly accurate test. In particular the second bullseye on the right can help you make sure you’re exactly perpendicular, as you’ll want both targets to be tack sharp. But the bells and whistles come at a price. The Spyder is extremely simple to set up. It starts like this:

You unsnap it and voila! Done. In contrast, the LensAlign comes like this:

And here are the directions to put it together:

If you are someone who gets thrown into a murderous rage by Ikea furniture, you might prefer the Spyder.

And of course there is the third option of doing it on your own — which at least is better than nothing. One decent trick is to put a coin on a towel or shag rug and focus on that — the threads of the towel will really show exactly where the focus plane is falling — and in all cases remember that it gets much more accurate as you zoom in on the picture, thanks to the circle of confusion.

If you have just a kit lens, you probably don’t have to worry. If you have one camera and a 50mm f/1.8, you can probably muddle through yourself. But for me, calibrating almost 20 lenses on two D3s’s and a D3, these were invaluable tools. I’ve had lenses rescued from the scrap heap because of focus micro-adjust. If you like shallow depth-of-field or think that you will in the future, this is a feature to watch out for as you buy a camera. It’s not a bad reason to pick up a D7000 over a D90, for example.

Virtually every one of my lenses was improved by this, though in many of the cases it wouldn’t be noticeable in normal usage.

Specs and purchase info:
Spyder LensCal
LensAlign

Tags: af fine tune, equipment, equipment review, focus micro-adjust, lensalign, lenscal

November 22, 2011

Review: Sigma 12-24mm Mark II

Specs and Pricing info

This summer, I looked at the gear I tended to use for weddings — never wider than 24mm, dominated by f/1.4 or f/1.2 primes — and said “Ok, let’s shake this up a bit.” So I chose the Sigma 12-24mm, which on a full-frame camera gives as wide a rectilinear frame as any lens for any system — a 122-degree frame of view. To go wider than that, you have to go fisheye. Moreover, the lens is one of the least light-sensitive professional lenses around — it starts at f/4.5 at the wide end, but if you want to zoom you should just consider it an f/5.6 lens, only letting in 1/16th the light of my 24mm f/1.4.

I’d been having a blast with it, working with new possibilities and limitations, when my pals at B&H asked me if I wanted to review the new version Sigma was releasing. Absolutely — the Mark I Sigma is extremely fun but more than a little quirky, and to get solid performance out of it you generally want to be in the f/11 range, severely limiting use as an indoor available-light lens. I figured the new lens would be more or less identical, but with some new coatings, a bit of new glass, but no major changes.

Then I opened the box. The new lens, even though it has the same basic specs, felt totally different. It’s longer, leaner, and with a wider rear element (the Mark I’s is strangely small). It felt sturdier in the hand, and I could immediately see an improvement in sharpness and vignetting wide-open. This doesn’t mean it’s optically perfect at f/4.5, but it does become more than usable — a real optical challenge at this frame of view.

I don’t often shoot blank walls, but this comparison tells the tale quite well. Below are photos taken with the old and new versions at 12mm f/4.5 with the same 1/4th power bounce flash off a white ceiling, on the left and right respectively:

Enough said. The white wall shows a far more dramatic result than most real-world applications, but when you look at the Mark I photo, the vignetting is so dramatic that you think you might have put a DX lens on your camera by mistake. Some of the vignetting on the left of the Mark II photo may be from the directionality of the flash combined with the extreme angle of view, but even then the falloff is far more gradual.

Also, the difference in color is interesting, given that these were taken with the same flash at the same intensity, in “Flash” white balance setting. The older Sigma seems to have a turquoise cast to it, especially in the vignette. Now, of course lots of photographers pay lots of money for Photoshop actions to create vignetting that looks sort of like that, so there’s no saying what’s better. But I strongly prefer the new version.

In terms of basic usage, it’s hard to tell any difference between the two, because a lens set to 12mm f/5.6 has such a deep depth-of-field already that autofocus is almost an afterthought. If you love bokeh in all of your images, this isn’t the lens for you.

But what sort of things IS this lens good for? Well, it’s wide. Really, really, really wide. So wide that anyone placed near the corners of its pictures looks like Jabba the Hutt. Like with a fisheye, shooting at 12mm is generally something you’ll want to do sparingly, but when used right it can give really dramatic accents.

For instance, it’s hard to find a better lens to show off the interior of a particularly ornate church:

And while subjects too close to you or too close to the edges of the frame will look clownish, with the right placing you can get a great deal of a scene in the frame without looking crazy. Here you can see a lot of the scene, including the same little peninsula I’m standing on, but it doesn’t scream “Crazy wide!!”

And the same here, because the human elements are close to the center of the frame:

The real strength of it is to see commonplace scenes in very different ways. Because it’s so wide, every parallel line instead becomes something converging toward a perspective — which might drive architects crazy, but can also make for interesting compositions:

Not to mention the sort of “reverse compression,” where your subjects can fit into any frame or arch or space that would normally be too large:

Sigma has done a greg job with the revamp of this lens — there are always going to be lots of challenges from shooting ultra, ultra-wide, but with the new model at least the challenges are just coming from perspective instead of lens design.

If this sounds up your alley, purchase it here.

Tags: equipment review

September 13, 2011

Quick Review: Nikon 40mm f/2.8 Micro DX

Specs and Pricing Info

So much new camera gear comes out all the time that my first thought at any new release is “Could this possibly be useful to me?” If not, I tend to not pay it much attention — such as the endless string of seemingly cloned compact cameras. Since all of my DSLR work is done on full-frame cameras, I haven’t paid too much attention to Nikon’s DX lineup for a while. And it’s a shame, since they’re still doing interesting things in that area. I know I wish that in my DX days I’d had access to newer designs like the 10-24mm.

But it got my attention that Nikon had recently released not one, but two DX-specific macro lenses, the 85mm f/3.5 and the 40mm f/2.8. I’d heard enough chatter to know that people were slightly disappointed by the 85mm’s sharpness (important for a macro) and slow maximum aperture, but I thought that if Nikon had done a good job with the 40mm, they might have a hit on their hands. As I mentioned in my review of the Sigma 150mm OS Macro, my close-up work tends to be of things that are not alive and do not move, and a short focal length makes that easier in some ways. I love the heck out of my Nikon 60mm AF-S Micro, and this new lens seems to serve the same niche for DX shooters at less size and weight and half the cost.

The first thing you notice when you open the box is how small the lens is. Like the 50mm f/1.8, you can barely feel the weight in your hand. The 60mm Macro isn’t exactly a monster itself, but given that both of these lenses have the same frame of view on their respective systems, you can see the size advantage that the DX frame gives in a comparison of the two with the hood and without:

I’ve also noticed on both this and the 50mm that Nikon has greatly increased the size of the lens mount marker on their new lenses and cameras. It will be interesting to see if they do this on new professional bodies, because while useful it also has just a bit of a Fisher-Price feel to it:

But the really important thing is “How does it perform?” Can it stand up to the 60mm, which is an amazingly sharp macro with great rendering? To properly test it, B&H also loaned me a great DX camera, the Nikon D7000. I don’t have enough use with that camera to review it properly, but I will say that its video functions run circles around my Nikon D3s‘s, and it was alarmingly fun to use.

DX cameras also have an inherent advantage in macro work. We generally call true macros anything that renders 1:1, which means that they can take a photo of an area the same size as their sensor. The larger the sensor, though, the less tiny that is. For maximum resolution of a tiny scene, it helps to have a small sensor crammed in with pixels. For most uses, the giant pixels on the D3s will give you less noise and greater dynamic range than the smaller ones on the D7000, but the D7000 is overall a much better macro camera.

Here we have the same rings photographed by the 40mm on the D7000 and the 60mm on the D3s, both at f/16. Which is which? The great news is that it’s really hard to tell — if I didn’t have the EXIF I wouldn’t be able to. (The 40mm is on the left).

But almost any lens is limited by diffraction at f/16, not the lens qualities themselves, so let’s look at the 40mm wide-open. The shot below, from the D7000, is a bigger magnification than is possible with the 60mm + D3s combo:

Depth-of-field is extremely shallow here, but a 100 percent crop will show how sharp this lens is wide-open — perhaps TOO sharp for a ring that’s seen better days:

There’s a bit of a false haze that comes from the way I lit this subject, and is similar in both lenses, so let’s look at another, cuter subject. I figure a $280 DX lens is going to see a lot of cat pictures, so I beat you to it:

This close-up of the side of a soda bottle says a lot about the lens’s character, good and bad, because the highlight-filled edges curve out of the focal plane and the high contrast shows a bit of magenta and green making an appearance:

But if you want to pixel-peep boring photos? Because I didn’t use this much on professional shoots, just this one I’m happy to oblige. For the pixel peepers, I took shots of a cereal box at f/8 and wide-open. Clicking those links will download the full-res JPG. But it’s just a cereal box (and not even my favorite cereal), so I’ll give you spoilers: It’s sharp.

This shot shows more of the DoF and contrast rendering, as well as some classy gear:

And there’s a little surprise as well: That is a full-frame capture from my D3s. Yes, at close-up distances the vignetting goes away even on a full-frame camera, disappearing almost completely when you stop down. I wouldn’t recommend this lens for full-frame users, but it means you can be quite sure you aren’t going to see any vignetting at all with a stopped-down image on a DX frame.

Light, small, cheap, sharp, and well-behaved across the frame? If I were a DX shooter I’d snap this up immediately.

Tags: equipment review, nikon 40mm f/2.8 micro-nikkor

September 6, 2011

Review: Sigma 150mm f/2.8 OS

Specs and Purchasing Info: (Nikon) (Canon) (Sony) (Pentax) (Sigma)

During the season, I shoot essentially constantly — I’m in the middle of a stretch of 21 days with shoots on 20 of them, sometimes more than one a day. This means it’s worth it to me to use absolutely the best equipment for my needs, whatever the price — and so it’s telling that my bag has Sigma lenses strewn in among the Nikkors. Gone are the days where third-party lenses are just cheaper, less sturdy versions of existing lenses. Now these makers, Sigma especially, have a knack for filling the sort of niches you might not have realized you needed. Only Sigma lets me shoot at 12mm on full frame. Want a lens that goes from 50-500mm? Sigma. A standard f/1.4 lens for APS-C cameras? Sigma. In my experience, they are less sturdy than professional Nikkors, and I’ve sent plenty to the repair shop, but it’s worth it to open up new ways of seeing.

The Sigma 150mm OS Macro is subtle in its uniqueness. There’s nothing unique about a true, 1:1 macro lens, and there’s nothing unique about an f/2.8 telephoto lens. But when you put them together? Impressive. Generally true macro lenses tend to be about one stop slower than equivalent non-macro lenses, such as Nikon’s 105mm f/2.8 macro versus their 105mm f/2 non-macro. But f/2.8 is a perfectly respectable aperture for a 150mm lens — any faster and you’re getting into super-expensive exotic lens territory. Throw in Optical Stabilization and you have a lens that, on paper at least, would be tempting even for photographers who never shoot macro, especially for photographers who occasionally want telephoto reach but don’t want the weight or expense of a 70-200mm VR.

Does it live up to its role? In all important ways yes, but given the strengths of the alternative choices, the full user report should be helpful in deciding what the right choice is for you.

Optical performance:

It is almost safe to assume that any true macro lens is going to be sharp. There are just a few notable exceptions, but these lenses are designed for resolution, and the Sigma 150mm is no exception. It doesn’t have the shocking almost-too-sharp-for-general-use quality of, say, the Sigma 70mm macro but wide-open it’s more than good enough for rock n’ roll, and stopped down just a few notches it easily out resolves my D3s sensor. I used this lens all for work, not safe shots of brick walls, so the image below was taken in a mahogany room at a quite-unsafe 4000 ISO, but it still gives you an idea of the crispness and color transmission of this lens.

Bokeh

If you are taking close-up pictures at 150mm and f/2.8, you’re going to have a lot more out-of-focus than in-focus, so the quality of those areas (“bokeh”) might matter quite a bit. What I’ve found in general is that the background bokeh is quite pleasing but the foreground areas can be somewhat busy, especially if there are multiple areas that overlap each other. All of my sample photos will have out-of-focus areas to look over, but here are specific examples:

Background bokeh:

Foreground and background, with lots of overlap (worst-case scenario)

Keep in mind that a photo can have choppy bokeh and still be aesthetically pleasing, which I think is the case in the second photo, but it’s handy to be aware of as you make compositions.

Overall usage:

This is a great lens to have in your bag. My biggest worry before I used it was that many macro lenses either don’t focus very quickly or have trouble locking focus, even with a focus-limiter switch, because of the huge focus range they have to be optimized for. Happily, though, the Sigma performs admirably. It has a focus-limiter switch that can limit the range to either just-macro or no-macro for general use, but I only had to use it in the worst lighting conditions. It even worked well when a care-free bride decided to start running straight at the camera:

Because of its specs, this lens seems to have two different specializations: Macro usage and general telephoto performance. For me, the macro usage was mixed in terms of its usefulness. The lens performs admirably, and a true 1:1 macro is very handy when I have to do tiny-detail work such as capturing the inscription on the inside of a ring. But the feel of using a macro lens can change dramatically with focal length. Longer macro lenses have a longer working distance, which is very handy when you’re photographing insects, who would be spooked if you were one inch away from them with a shorter lens, or when you’re using complicated lighting set-up and need to get out of the way of your own shadow. But I tend to photograph objects like rings, and there the shallower depth-of-field usually works against me. The ring in the picture below would seem slightly sharper if shot with a 60mm at the same aperture (f/5.6), because the plane of focus would run through the whole diamond. Generally, it’s a good idea to break out the tripod when doing long-macro work, which I often don’t have time for:

(You can see how insanely narrow the DoF is by looking at the line of texture beneath the ring)

For general use, this is a great option for people who want the reach of a 70-200 without the weight or cost. Given the focus breathing issue of Nikon’s 70-200, at closer distances the Sigma 150 has at least as much reach as the zoom at 200mm! The Sigma comes with two hoods — one for FX users and a narrower one for DX users, but both are a little bit intimidating, taking away a bit of the relative size advantage versus the 70-200:

The only other issue is that while it’s significantly lighter than the 70-200, it’s not a light lens. Sigma unfortunately was unable to add optical stabilization without significantly increasing the weight. The new 150mm is 1150g, or 75 percent as much weight as the 70-200 VRII. But the old, OS-free 150mm was only 895g, or 58 percent the weight of the 70-200! For people like me who try to travel as light as possible, it’s a bit of a shame.

Also, general users should note that all macro lenses transmit less light as they reach close-focusing distances, and modern macro lenses report this to the camera as a smaller f-stop. The Sigma 150 will often give a light-transmission-rating of f/3 instead of f/2.8 even at normal portrait distances.

Buying recommendations:

If you want a lens that can photograph little critters and also function as a general telephoto lens in all sorts of light, this is probably the lens for you. If you don’t care about the macro functions, then you are likely finding yourself choosing between this and a 70-200. This lens is much cheaper than the Nikon or Canon versions, but only $300 cheaper than the Sigma 70-200 OS, so it comes down to personal preference. Even though I love primes, I’ve found that in that range a zoom is really handy to have, because zooming with your feet at 150mm might mean walking back or forth 10 feet to get the right composition.

In some ways the heaviest competition for this lens would be the OS-free version, which might be a better companion to a 70-200 VR, as backup and for times when weight really matters, while this is the better 70-200 replacement. But it seems that Sigma is making the choice for you by discontinuing the old model. Luckily the new one is a great performer.

Sample photos:

Tags: equipment, equipment review, sigma, sigma 150mm, sigma lenses

July 18, 2011

Review: 200mm f/2 VR II (director’s cut)

If you have $6000 lying around, purchase the lens here

My review of the exotic, awesome, Nikon 200mm f/2 VRII is up at B&H’s Web site! Thank you so much, guys, for letting me use this fantastic tool. (My next review will be of something much more affordable, I promise).

As someone who’s extensively used both of Nikon’s 70-200s and has experience with the older model 200mm f/2, I had a fair bit of perspective on this lens, so check out the review. But here I have a bit more room for big sample images, so consider this the “director’s cut” of sample photos:

30-image “Brenizer method” panorama

The Amazing Wendy…

Sneak peek at the next wedding on the blog…

45-image Brenizer-method panorama.

Tags: equipment review, nikon

June 23, 2011

Review: LitePad HO+

Specs and Ordering Info:
Daylight Balanced
Tungsten Balanced

On its face, the LitePad HO+ looks as simple as a photographic device could possibly be. Essentially, it looks like a ceiling tile that lights up:

And in practice, that’s what it is — and it’s brilliant. The team at B&H was giving me a tour of all of the changes they’ve been making to the store when I saw these hanging on a wall, and I said “What is that? Can I review THAT?” Simplicity intrigues me — maybe I’m simple-minded.

Actually, though, there are some really clever things going on under this one-centimeter-thick hood. You see, a light like the LitePanel MicroPro consists of a bunch of LED lights aimed directly forward. This is power-efficient, but so far designs that require so many LED lights are really expensive — the 1′-by-1′ variant is currently $1,795. What the LitePad does is have a row of LED lights around the edges aimed inward, and the design of the interior reflects that light outward. I’d expect the middle of the LitePad to be significantly darker than the edges, but the Rosco engineers seem to have figured that out well, and it provides a nice, even output. The LitePad still isn’t cheap at all, but a 1′ square model will run you less than a third of the LitePanel. So for just a bit more than the popular MicroPro, you can have a much larger light source, which makes for softer, generally more flattering light. Here is the MicroPro lying on the LitePad for comparison:

However, there is a cost to the savings — power. Here’s what happens when you turn them on (the LitePanel model I used is tungsten-balanced):

Given that LED lights are already much less powerful than even small strobes, this means effective usage will be limited to spaces with dim ambient light such as indoors or after sunset.

But, to my mind, sometimes dim lighting is exactly what I need, and the dimmer the better, which leads to the second annoyingly quirky thing about the LitePad — it doesn’t ship with a dimmer, and the seperately sold dimmer switch is more than $100.

Quirky, limited usage, simplistic — I immediately fell in love with it. In fact, I didn’t want to review it because I didn’t want other photographers to use it. My job is to work very quickly to make people look good, and broad light sources tend to do that much better. Furthermore, the design makes it incredibly portable — the 1′-square model easily slides in my camera bag’s laptop pocket, and given the extreme thinness I could fit in three more if I wanted. This is for the base model without a tripod mount, though — the mountable Rosco Axiom is necessarily thicker.

What are the effects of the larger light source in practice? My long-suffering girlfriend Wendy was willing to help show this off. Here she is lit at arm’s length by the LitePanel Micropro:

And here she is lit by the LitePad from the same position (white balance adjusted):

Really a huge difference, and much faster to just pull this out of a laptop pocket than to set up a continuous light into a softbox. I love it. I may come back to these as a sort of secret weapon, or even buy an expensive set for times when I want to turn it to 11 and really set up cinema-style lighting.

But the more I thought about, the more I want to look at some other alternatives first, because there are a few things that make this rough around the edges:

The parts are delicate. The LitePad itself is very sturdy given its thinness, but the connector wiggles somewhat worryingly, and the accessories are very fragile, especially the AA battery-holder.
I know that in video world these things are different, but to me as a photographer, “tungsten” means green-free orangey light, somewhere in the neighborhood of 2850K. With included gels, I can get the MicroPro down to a super-warm 2500K. The LitePanel, though, is very hard to gel, so you’re going to take what you can get — and in the tungsten model, that is a pretty greenish 3800K. In other words, to my mind, florescent, not tungsten. This is apparently a problem with a lot of current video lights, as I have seen videographer after videographer spilling unflattering puke-green lights onto my clients as they film.
It’s much cheaper than a 1′ LitePanel, but at $600+ with the dimmer it’s expensive enough that I want to have more confidence in the build quality, as I am VERY hard on my gear. I already had one AA battery-holder come apart in my hands (though at least those ARE inexpensive).
So I’ve reached a paradox where I loved this so much I didn’t want to tell any of you, but I will be sending it back for the time being. There’s a lot happening on the continuous lighting front, and I want to make sure I know exactly what’s right for me. This could well be it, as it has the blessings of a soft light source that I can create VERY quickly, but some experimentation is in order.

In the meantime, here are some samples with it from the field:

It’s a GREAT light for details.

Its flat, even light even makes it the perfect thing to shoot macro on TOP of for uplighting, using other lights for balance:

But really what it’s great at is a quick, flattering light for people:

(this last is a composite, with the light in the frame of the originals about a foot away from each. There it is strong enough for a bit of fill even in shade).

It’s going to hurt me to give this one back, and I may buy another copy soon, but first I will experiment with the cost-benefit ratios of similar products.

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Tags: equipment review, litepad, rosco, rosco litepad ho+

May 10, 2011

Fuji X100 review

In-camera “motion panorama” taken with the X100

Specs and Purchasing Info

The Fuji X100 has been hotly anticipated for a very long time — in fact, long before it was announced, designed, or conceived. In the film days there were countless great little cameras that paired sharp, fast lenses with nice operation … the Konica Hexar, the Olympus Pen, and on and on and on… Until recently, though, this space was widely underserved by digital camera makers, whose small cameras were either saddled with tiny sensors, giving them high noise, poor dynamic range, and no depth-of-field control, or were just smaller versions of the big, professional DSLRs, which when paired with a good lens made them not truly small at all.

Most of the market was pretty well-served — just want to take snapshots? Buy a pocket camera or use your phone. Want a versatile tool that can create great images in any situation? Go for a professional DSLR with the right lenses and lighting. But a lot of people were left scratching their heads. Why can’t we have a small camera that’s truly great in low-light? How can we recreate the fun and quality of these old film cameras? And then there were a lot of people like me — I own literally the best possible photographic equipment for my purposes. I spend a staggering amount of my waking hours doing or thinking about photography. But my cameras and lenses are heavy, conspicuous, and cumbersome, so if I’m not on the job, I walk around without a camera at all. That’s just … wrong.

Recently camera makers have tried different forays into this space, whether it’s the micro-Four-Thirds cameras of Olympus and Panasonic, Sigma’s DP2, or Leica’s X1 I tried the X1 both before and after the recent firmware upgrade, and the new firmware makes it a nice, but overpriced camera that would be a nice option in a world where the X100 didn’t exist.

But now it does, and I’ve been shooting with it constantly for the past week. I was going to do an extensive comparison to the X1, but this is, as they say, a curb-stomp. The X100 has a lens that is twice as fast as the X1, it has better operations in most aspects (although the X1′s firmware upgrade does make it’s manual-focus more usable than the X100′s), and its vintage aesthetics are, in my opinion, much nicer. I’ve already had people come up to me and jokingly tell me they wanted to steal the X100 from me even though they had no idea what camera it was, and even when I was also carrying a Nikon D3s. All that and it’s cheaper than the X1 (although not cheap, itself). The comparison is done. You can tell Fuji was gunning for the X1 just by the name of the X100, and they succeeded. Unless you have some very specialized needs or are a red-dot fetishist, I can’t imagine someone buying an X1 at market rate now.

So let’s get to the camera itself. I had very high expectations for this camera. Did it live up to them?

You bet it did.

The first thing you will note about using the X100 is that it’s fun right from the start. The innovative hybrid viewfinder alone will make you want to run around and take pictures with your eye glued to it. You know a camera is fun when it wants to make you take photographs even if you know the composition is garbage, just because the act of taking a photo gives you enjoyment. That’s how we all start when we pick up our first camera, but we lose that joy somewhere along the way as we start drilling down to improve our portfolio or do “serious work” with our cameras. Well, for the first night I immediately started terrorizing my cats, loving that the near-total silence of the camera could let me get right in their faces without fazing them. (The X100 has a special “silent mode” that puts the camera in maximal ninja mode with no sound or flash, but you can turn the shutter sound off in normal modes, too.

But is it suitable for professional work? It can be. Compared to a Nikon D3s with a 35mm f/1.4 lens it has much less depth-of-field control and not as insane low-light performance, but the fact that I used it as part of my arsenal for engagement shoots and a wedding this weekend speaks volumes. I will never sacrifice the quality of my client work for a review, and even though I had the Leica X1 for two weddings I wasn’t comfortable enough with it for it to ever come out of my bag. But at this weekend’s wedding, I shot hundreds of photos with the X100, and would have taken more if it didn’t run out of batteries.

Clearly I like this camera. So let’s start with what I don’t like, given that it’s a shorter list.

The bad:

The price: Compared to the $9,000 you’d drop for a Leica M9 with a 35mm f/2 lens, this camera seems like a steal. But it was expensive to start out with and scarcity has made it even more expensive. But the only other camera in its class right now is $2,000. Competition of later models will hopefully bring the price down in years to come, now that makers have seen how much people are hungering for this sort of camera. And honestly, when compared to the competition, the price probably belongs in the “good” section, especially when it comes back down to where it should be. But now that makers see that this isn’t just a tiny niche market, it should eventually come down more.
Some of the function placement, particularly ISO. You can map ISO to your function button, but that robs you of a function button, and to turn auto-ISO on and off you have to go menu-diving into the third page of the setup menu. Some sort of Nikon-like “favorite menu items” list is sorely needed in a firmware update.
Macro is soft wide open The X100 has a great macro functionality, but it opens itself to sometimes massive veiling flare when shot at f/2. Here’s a macro shot at f/2 and f/4 to show the difference. I selected a slightly backfocused f/2 shot because it creates a worst-case scenario (so usually it’s not this bad, but it’s noticeable). At distance, f/2 is plenty sharp.
f/2:

f/4:
F/2 in general has some funny properties You get the feeling that they had to make some sacrifices to get a lens this small to open this wide. Auto-functions will maximize a shutter speed of 1/1000th of a second when using f/2, which can limit your outdoor usage (they have a nice built-in ND filter feature for it, but again you have to menu-dive for it). But you can use shutter speeds of 1/4000th or higher just fine if you manually select them.
The long throw of manual focus makes it almost useless Want to set your manual-focus, especially in macro? You have to turn and turn and turn until whatever you wanted to take a photo of is long gone. The X1 had this issue, and it was nicely fixed by a firmware upgrade, so I’m hoping Fuji can do the same.
The lens cap. I already lost mine. Rolled into a sewer grate. Just bought an old Leica cap and hood that can be more easily attached.

This camera is a bit quirky, so there may be a lot of other things that make you bag your head at first or until you carefully go through the manual — which I’m not used to, since all DSLRs pretty much work the same way — but in less than a week I’ve figured out pretty much everything else except these things.

Now…

The Good

Aesthetics. Does it matter whether or not a camera is good-looking? Well, it doesn’t hurt. The entire nature of this sort of camera has a bit of a retro feel to it from the “f/8 and be there” days of photojournalism and street photography, and the form matches the function gorgeously.
The viewfinder. Brilliant, and perhaps the main advantage over similar-sized systems like the Sony NEX-5 or the downtrodden X1 again. I haven’t imagined anything Nikon could make me want to upgrade my D3s to a new camera for, but a professional version of this hybrid viewfinder might do it. Sometimes an electronic viewfinder has advantages, as it can show you *exactly* the photo you’re going to get, even if you’re exposing much above or below real-life lighting, or using shallow depth-of-field. If the EVF had “retina resolution,” that alone could tempt me to buy a D4. As it is, the X100′s EVF is pretty good, and I find myself using it more than the optical finder.
Unobtrustiveness. I’ve learned to be pretty unobtrusive even with a big camera clicking away. But having a little camera that makes virtually no noise at all brings it to an entirely different level. I would *never* get this close to a singer performing at a wedding ceremony with a shutter-snapping camera:

And it was great for little moments during wedding prep when people would get into the rhythm of not even knowing when I was or wasn’t taking a picture, and be themselves:
Responsiveness. No, unlike the D3s or professional DSLRs you can’t just mash the shutter away and know that a picture would be taken ever time, no matter what. If you’re shooting RAW+fine JPEG it will take a second or so to write to the card. But the shutter lag is small enough that you can definitely do photojournalism with this as long as you have a good sense of timing:
Image quality. This is the best low-light sensor I’ve used in any APS-C camera (though I haven’t used recent ones like the D7000 Pentax K-5, etc.) This makes it the best low-light sensor in any current Fuji camera. Though it doesn’t have the dynamic range tricks of the Fuji S5 Pro, dynamic range is good, and it has some built-in dynamic range options that push and pull the JPEGs to maximize it. (Warning — if you use these DR options and then process the RAW files in third-party programs, you will tend toward underexposure). It also has that great Fuji color. Fuji has always had great out-of-camera JPEGs, and I still extract the built-in JPEGS because sometimes they’re better than what I can get with processing. Here’s an image first as the in-camera JPEG and then as the RAW file processed with Aperture (which you can do if you convert it to a DNG). Clicking on either of these will download the full-resolution image. The RAW file is sharper, but the colors of the original are at least as good, with warmer shadows:
Original:

Processed RAW file:

The colors are vibrant, the pictures are sharp, and noise is low. Here’s an ISO 3200 image in tricky light:

100 percent crop:

The autofocus belongs in both categories, but mostly in “good.” It hunts a lot in macro mode, but that’s to be expected. In good or decent light it is zippy and accurate. In really low-light, though … that’s where the phase detection AF system of a good DSLR comes into its own.

Recommendation:
I kind of see the X100 as being like the iPad, a fantastic accessory to a main system. Most people who are just looking for their main camera will be better served by something cheaper or by something more versatile. But for people who love that street photography and 1960s photojournalism aesthetic or, like me, have funds, have big, heavy primary cameras and can’t stand the thought of walking around all day without a way to capture the world around you with more response and quality than your cell phone can, this is a great camera for you. You will probably never see me in public again without it*

*Which means I will probably lose it quickly, since I’m used to five pound cameras, but I like it enough that I’ll buy another one.

Some more pictures from the X100.

The small size and weight made getting the right angle in a tight cab a lot easier.

Out-of-camera JPEG:

Unobtrusiveness allowed me to shoot a couple in the Apple Store unmolested. As soon as I pulled out the D3s the clerks got uneasy:

Out-of-camera JPEG. Clicking will download full-res version.

Tags: equipment review, fuji x100, fuji x100 review, x100 review

January 7, 2011

Review: Nikon 35mm f/1.4

Lens specs and pricing information

This review was very hard to be objective about. You see, I’ve been waiting impatiently for Nikon to release this lens for more than five years. At first glance, one would think that the increasingly light-sensitive sensors of DSLRs would kill off demand for fast primes, but the reverse has been true — and the reasons are simple. Having the option for limited depth-of-field and as much light sensitivity as possible is great, and now there’s not nearly so much guesswork about “was that shot actually in focus or not?” There are a lot more choices now than “f/8 and be there.”

I was clearly excited about this, since my non-photographer girlfriend asked me “What’s so special about this lens?”

Nothing, in a way. 35mm is a pretty unexciting focal length, on its face. Slightly wide, it doesn’t have the warped-corner look of an ultra-wide. It doesn’t have the instant eye-candy look of an exotic telephoto lens. It’s just a workhorse focal length, that strips everything down and focuses on content, and for general coverage, it is well-paired with moderate telephoto lenses like an 85mm f/1.4 or 70-200mm f/2.8.

Which made it so deeply strange that Nikon hadn’t made a professional lens in this focal length since 1981 (and that one wasn’t regarded as one of their best lenses.

There’s a lot of anticipation here to fill, especially since the new lens, at $1800, isn’t cheap, especially when you can get a full-frame 35mm f/2 for $360, or a DX 35mm f/1.8 for under $200. Can it live up to the hype?

Let me just get this out of the way: For most users, no. If you’re using an entry-level DX camera because that’s where your budget is, buy the 35mm f/1.8 for one-ninth the price. You’ll love it, and if you get into hefty full-frame gear later, you can always sell it for almost the same price.

For me? The lens is not 100 percent perfect, but I am thrilled. And here’s why.

BUILD: Not everyone likes the hard plastic build of modern Nikon professional lenses, but to me it creates an attractive, sturdy package. The lens hood is nice and stiff and easily reversible. And it’s big — almost as big as the 24mm and 85mm f/1.4 lenses in the same family. For lots of people, this will be kind of a shame because a 35mm is a great walk-around focal length, and this is really bulky for a lens to carry on you all day every day. For me, who mostly uses these on professional shoots with giant D3s cameras, it’s not quite big enough — I strongly prefer native 77mm filters on my lenses, instead of the 67mm ring this has. But that’s what step-up rings are for.

IMAGE QUALITY: Extremely good, but likely not an absolute resolution champ like the 100mm f/2 Makro. It really seems like this lens was optimized for wide-open performance, so the difference between wide-open and middle-apertures is not as great as with most lenses — f/1.4 is really sharp, and f/8 is just a bit more sharp, but you can find sharper lenses if you look hard. It’s great for me, because if I paid for an f/1.4 lens I want to use it near-wide-open unless I have a good reason not to, but there are easier choices for landscape and studio shooters.

Here’s a comparison at f/8 and f/1.4, which also shows the good close-focus this lens features:

The bokeh is as good as I have come to expect from recent Nikon lenses. Nice transitions, good highlights:

Example of good foreground bokeh, also a lack of flare despite multiple light sources:

AUTOFOCUS: Users expecting the same lighting speed of the Canon 35mm f/1.4L will be disappointed at first — like the new Nikon 24mm and 85mm f/1.4s, this is not a speed champ, being just a bit faster than the 24. But it’s very accurate, even at wide apertures — noticeably more so in difficult focusing situations than the 24mm f/1.4 (which I also love, despite its trickiness). I could see right away that it was much easier to get in-focus f/1.4 shots on a dark dance floor with this than with the 24, though not quite as easy as the ludicrously fast-and-accurate 24-70mm f/2.8. I came to trust it pretty quickly.

NOTE: My copy needed serious AF micro-adjustment, about -15. This was not true of my 24G or 85G, but has been true of other lenses like the 135mm f/2. Be sure to test your lenses thoroughly. Micro-adjustment is the best feature invented for cameras since digital sensors.

Even in the near-darkness of ISO 12,800 at f/1.4, it was able to lock on well:

Speaking of ISO 12,800, this next one shows why we have f/1.4 lenses in the first place. The Church of San Frediano in Lucca, Tuscany is absolutely gorgeous, but to protect the art, much of it is too dark to make out with the naked eye. This part of the ceiling, captured at 1/15th, ISO 12,800, f/1.4, was almost black to my eye. I would have needed a tripod to capture it otherwise.

Final verdict: This is going to be an extremely valuable part of my bag, and it was well worth the cost. Now that this is a new year, I will be restarting the Photo of the Day archive, and keep an eye out for lots of photos taken with the 35 there.

More Photos at f/1.4: